Dawn, The Omen Of Day

Dawn, the omen of day, with shroud discarded
Pierced with stars retreating
Wields sharpened rays to chase shade
Deep beneath the overhangs
And with it sleep, defeated

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A Conversation

I look into your eyes–you stare
I find an irony somehow
In everything about your face
But I push that aside for now
I ask you of the life you chose
And is it working out so far
Behind the tired rings you wear
All the bitter nights have carved
Colors tell the story well
Though you simply shrug and laugh
But we both know you’re not yourself
And maybe he will not come back
I look into your eyes–so deep
I ask you if you have regrets
You slowly turn your head and speak
Whispering replies in breath
“I wouldn’t want to say it’s good
Or claim that I am glad at all
For how it all turned out–or could”
But then you lift your head up tall
“I know that this has cost so much
I know I may appear unwell
But heaven here is hard to touch
I guess I had to go through hell
It doesn’t mean I’m scared to burn
It doesn’t mean I don’t look back
I could have walked the easy way
But I choose not to think of that”
If all the sleepless nights were stars
The galaxy is in your look
If all the tears you cried were words
The lines across your cheek are books
I look into your eyes–you stare
I find an irony somehow
I see you every day right here
But cannot seem to search you out
And when I think I know you well
Or when I think you’re feeling fine
My mirror finds the truth to tell
Your tired face is just like mine

Dreams Of A Flightless Bird

A wisp of scented breeze
Over gently stirring fields
If time is here at all
Then it must be standing still
My heart escapes my chest
A balloon without a string
The body that it left
All the evidence it came

I want to drift away
Where the mountains meet the sky
Ascending on the storm
Like a bird

I want to disappear
Without waving a goodbye
The sun to keep me warm
On my way

A wisp of scented breeze
Is my harbinger of grace
If pain was ever real
Then it must have been erased
My dreams escape my head
Like a flock of winter geese
These endless numbered days
Are the path to my release

I want to drift away
Where the ocean hugs the shore
The tide beneath my wings
Like a bird

I want to disappear
Like the early morning dew
Alive again and new
On my way

Stealing The Moon

Stealing the moon
Gathering fragments to sweep into piles
Tidied and hiding in unpolished eyes
Weary diversions for subtle conditions
Cradled in visions she cannot describe

Stealing the moon
Kleptomaniacal just for tonight
Grasping at beams–she is holding so tight
Keeping reflections in tattered arrays
Tugging at sparkles that once were so bright

Stealing the moon
Storing the pieces in some other room
Wrapped away snugly in linens, but soon
Dark will be on her and she will return
Burning with passion but never consumed

No Reply

I found the tears
They were waiting for me
In the driver’s seat
On an empty street
Parked over the line
Where no one cared
Jill Phillips told me
“If we danced like this everyday”
But I cannot breathe
And just barely move
Enough to push it out
All of it out
This God-awful pain
But I don’t complain
I can be civil and sweet
Faceless and obsolete
I just wish that life
Could go away
Stop nursing me back to health
Just leave me here
To slip into the dark
In the car
With a guitar and a bleeding heart
Beneath blinking red lights
Can I come home tonight?
“I want to go home tonight”
I. Want. To. Go. Home.
But there is no reply

Close

The sun–so bright
The air–so cold
The world–so wide
I feel so old

I want to close
I want to close
I want to close
My eyes for now

The time–so strong
The dreams–so real
The day–so long
I start to feel

I want to close
I want to close
I want to close
My eyes a while

The weight–so much
The pain–so deep
I miss your touch
I need to sleep

I want to close
I want to close
I want to close
My eyes today

My heart–so weak
My head–so lost
My mind conceives
The simple thought:

I want to close
I want to close
I want to close
My eyes today

Dead, Rising

The dirt is fresh beneath the fingernails
And I cannot deny
I tried to bury them in shallow graves
But they refuse to die
I must have crafted some immortal strains
And grafted in the cells
Of something stronger than the common things
We hold within ourselves

Now it appears my current company
Is not about to leave
And all the feelings that are haunting me
Will not be put to sleep
So, in the doorway of my heart, I halt
Unmoving where I stand
I hear them clawing out to find me
With the shovel in my hand

And maybe I should be ashamed to think
I tried to put them down
But I am fighting for my life tonight
Against the hollow sound
Of all the beauty I believed in once
Before I found it dead
I hear the memories of lovely things
Like zombies in my head

The empty graveyard of my passion aches
With graves I cannot fill
They rise and follow me to bed at night
Despite my pleading will
So I suppose I will not bury them
At least, no more today
For I am far too tired-handed now
To lift this weighted spade

For A Moment The World Does Not Exist

Float off inside the hum
Like a monotonous choir
Of a small mechanical device
Serenading me
I can feel at peace
As if the world does not exist
And I am not in it
But gone
Far away in some dimension
Where belonging is not a quest
And living is not a duty
For a moment I am unconcerned
With all the things that burdened these seconds
With life and love and sanctity
And I can just be
Me

Viper

The evening coils about me
Like a viper seeking heat
Shoving teeth beneath my reason
Until, overcome by venom
I succumb and cease resisting
And it swallows me in sleep

Wake Up Screaming

It’s been too long
Too much on my mind
I don’t recall myself at all
It went so wrong
Too much undefined
Before the last of me dissolved

Asleep
I thought that it was real
I thought that this was life
But I must have been dreaming

I keep
Noticing the threads
Starting to unwind
Someday I will wake up screaming

It’s cut too deep
Too close to the heart
I feel I’m slipping down a hole
What I can’t speak
Is tearing me apart
And I’m afraid that if I go…

To sleep
I’ll think that it was real
I’ll think that this was life
But I must have been dreaming

I keep
Noticing the threads
Starting to unwind
Someday I will wake up screaming

Somebody please
Won’t you pinch me and wake me
Something in dreams
Is attempting to take me
I once believed
All I needed was right there
I want to live
But I’m living a nightmare

Oh, sleep
I thought that you were real
I thought that I was right
But I must have been dreaming

I keep
Tossing in my bed
About to lose my mind
One day I will wake up screaming

Vampire

Feel, oh feel the blood congeal
The organs stutter
Heartbeats flutter

Feel, oh feel the thickened skin
Eyes recolored
Breathing smothered

Maybe I’m alive
Or maybe I am living dead
Apathy impaled and disenchanted

Maybe I’m infected
Maybe I am the disease
Am I too far gone to understand it?

Am I a vampire?
I feel like I am burning in the light
This transformation…
I can’t see my reflection anymore

Am I a vampire?
I suffer but I never seem to die
Am I a monster?
My bed feels like a coffin on the floor

In Absence Of Tears

When I could cry no longer
My tears became a fire
A brand upon my passion
To set the world ablaze

When I could cry no longer
My eyes abandoned color
Abrasions from the anger
Impressed upon my gaze

When I could cry no longer
The shadows in my corners
These denizens distorted
Invaded my respite

When I could cry no longer
My life became my torture
My waking turned to anguish
Which followed me to night

When I could cry no longer
The emptiness and hunger
The stresses I was under
Became a prison cell

When I could cry no longer
My grief became the sulfur
My pain became the chamber
My mind became a hell

Slight Glow

By the glow
By the very slight glow
Of a tiny red light
From the charger on my phone
I can see
I can almost make out
All the pretty little monsters underneath my bed
As my muscles let go
And I sink into sheets
I can almost hear them giggling below me
As I drift off in sleep

Mirage

Subtle illusions awake
Taking the form of a figure so pale
Softly enshrouded
Bound and enraptured
Spun in a gossamer web I am captured

Shimmering embers of flame
Mocking the reach of my desperate touch
Drawn and enfolded
Held and enchanted
Taken in silence these storms have demanded

Currents converging in flesh
Stroking the edge of an infinite spark
Fully surrounded
Merciful phantom
Stolen for words and by gaze held at ransom

Surfaces feint and deceiving
Mimic unhindered a contour willing
Yielded for distance
Supple for friction
Perfect reflection and perfectly fiction

Passing ethereal drone
Sheer apparition of dream or of air
Molded from wishes
Vaporous passion
Cruel substitution for form fairer fashioned

Banish this hollow mirage
Scatter this heartless seduction of wind
Out with your pretense
Off with your scheming
My lover warms me much better than dreaming

Close with her skin I am calmed
Drowned in her gaze and revived in her arms
Touch everlasting
Voice ever calling
Drunken in love as a fool ever falling

Devious sleep I renounce
Nothing of magic or myth I require
Bring me the dawn
Give me my life
Let us be dreams for the sleepers tonight

Shadow Box

In bended shapes
A woman takes
The scraps of all she finds
With smallish hands
And sewing thread
To fasten it together

Behind the drapes
A record plays
To help her pass the time
In other plans
Her tired head
Can see a world that’s better

The souvenirs
Of early years
Adorn a faded quilt
Awaiting some
Appointed time
In patient little piles

Her bottled tears
And casual stares
The treasures she has built
With baby’s hair
And turpentine
Above the kitchen tiles

The winter fox
Beneath the porch
Is hiding from the hunters
Her picket fence
Is broken where
The tree line meets the field

Her shadow box
And story boards
Will hold her through ’till summer
In finger dance
The rocking chair
Beside her window sill

Arts & Crafts

My arts and crafts
Are hearts and masks
Cut out of thoughts
And glued together

Paper faces
Lines I traced
From other smiles
And other places

Take a razor
And a paper
Make a face that
Suits me better

Crude constructions
Simulations
Of expressions
I can’t fashion

Take some scissors
Strong adhesive
Bend the edges
Shape the pieces

Lips for smiling
Eyes for lying
Skin like armor
Just to hide me

My arts and crafts
Are hearts and masks
All colored neat
Inside the lines

If there’s mistakes
We can erase
And start again
With better pens

My arts and crafts
Are jokes and laughs
To cover scratches
Fresh and bleeding

Paper faces
I created
From the things
Left strewn about

Everything Is Tainted

When your eyes are scratched
By objects unforgiving
When your vision warps
The colors you perceive
Everything is tainted

When your hands are marked
By scars that steal the feeling
When your fingers reach
For things you cannot find
Everything is tainted

When your dreams are gripped
By demons uninvited
When your sleep is torn
In pieces you can’t mend
Everything is tainted

When your heart is broke
By bitter disappointment
When a void replaces
Things you once believed
Everything is tainted

Wrap Me

Disguised
As a fugitive bird
In the tall of her grass
When the foxes are out

With eyes
Like a kerosene lamp
When the wick doesn’t last
And the flame is burnt out

But I
Know a place to escape
Where the world doesn’t see
And the foxes won’t tread

Inside
There’s a labyrinth of shapes
And the essence of me
Like the words in my head

Wrap me in metaphors
Cover me in lines
Paint me in cadence
Cradle me in rhymes
I will find peace here
If no one finds me
So you be the rhythm
And I will be the poetry

Humdrum Heart

Wake up, you tired little muscle
Don’t let me down today
I know you’ve been working overtime
Just keep some blood in my veins
We have a lot to accomplish
If we work together I’m sure
We will find rest out here someday
The humdrum of living will disappear

Sleep when you can
Don’t lose your rhythm
Keep yourself warm
You can’t stop giving
I still depend
On you being steady
So wake up, my friend
Although you are heavy

I will take care to protect you
If you won’t abandon me now
I can’t guarantee I won’t break you
I guess we both know how that worked out
We still have daylight for living
And moonlight for being alone
Wake up and bring me some color
We have so much to get done

Sleep when you can
Don’t lose your rhythm
Keep yourself warm
You can’t stop giving
People can’t see
How you’ve been exhausted
But they can see me
And I need to make it

So wake up, you tired little muscle
Don’t let me down today
I know you don’t feel like moving
But please keep some blood in my veins
We have a lot to accomplish
If we work together I’ll bet
We can be all they expected of us
So please don’t give up on me yet